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Education

University of Notre Dame Law School, J.D., 1998

University of Notre Dame, B.A. 1995

Bar Admissions

Michigan

Andrew Blum specializes in a variety of complex litigation areas, including eminent domain and land use litigation, oil and gas rights disputes, business fraud/tort cases, and material supply agreement disputes in the automotive industry.

Andrew devotes considerable time to representing both landowners and condemning authorities in eminent domain cases involving public improvements as diverse as Downtown Development Authorities, railroad crossings, road improvements, storm water treatment plants, bike trails, consolidated drains, electrical lines, sidewalk easements, parks, and ice rinks. He also has served as litigation counsel for financial institutions which have been involved in Article III and Article IV Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) related disputes.

He has represented numerous material purchasers in negotiations with their suppliers over whether these material cost increases would be passed on to the purchasers. He also has served as litigation counsel for Tier Two and Tier Three automotive clients in any disputes with material suppliers which could not be resolved through negotiations up to and including appellate litigation in the Michigan Supreme Court.

As a component of his litigation practice, Andrew and his colleagues have repeatedly confronted situations in which material suppliers have refused to ship material to their clients because of price disputes. These ‘No Ship’ cases have required Andrew's team to provide strategies and/or litigation support to their clients to resolve or litigate those disputes on a relatively quick turnaround basis.

Andrew is also the author of the leading treatise on the laches doctrine in Michigan.

Andrew and his colleagues are currently in the midst of representing AMTRAK in the closure of numerous private crossings across a multi-county stretch of track in Michigan.

Additionally, Andrew is the principal architect of the legal strategy in dealing with and defeating various conversion claims brought against a national oil and gas producer regarding segments of its Michigan oil and gas production. The legal strategy has helped prevent multi-million dollar losses to this client.

Recently, Andrew was involved in cutting-edge constitutional litigation in which he served as a chief architect of the legal reasoning for both a nationwide stay and then nationwide preliminary injunction. The case received both national and international press coverage.

Most recently, Andrew's alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, and the Grand Rapids Notre Dame Club honored him as the 2017 "Person of the Year," their most distinguished award.

Representative Matters

Andrew co-defended a major financial institution in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by one of its business customers for alleged Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Article III and Article IV violations. The customer asserted that the financial institution acted improperly when it allowed business checks to be deposited into the personal account of one of the business' employees and that these deposits allegedly resulted in millions of dollars in damages to the business.

Because this particular employee had been previously convicted of federal check-kiting charges and had already been convicted of criminal activity with regard to her check-writing activity for the business, Andrew and his team recommended pursuing alternative strategies. Their investigation thus centered on possible alternative explanations for why the deposits did not harm the business.

After examining hundreds of boxes of documents, Andrew and his team discovered one two-page document that seemed to support an alternative explanation. Based in part on this document and good deposition questioning, they were able to get the business owner to admit that he and his employee were in fact partners and that these transactions were authorized and thus the business was not damaged by the deposits. As a result, the case was dismissed at summary judgment.